Expert: Joe McSorley - 10/7/2007

Question
Hello Mr McSorley!

In Buddhism they talk a lot about enlightenment. Buddha himself achieved enlightenment and his students probably too. However, what is an enlightenment actually?
How to define it? Is there any guru who tells his students that you and you are enlightened because you  fulfilled this and that condition, or maybe they solve a test :)?
How the practicioner himself is able to define whether he/she achieved enlightenment or not? How do they know that this is not an illusion, but it's true? Is the enlightenment experience something permanent? Is it possible that with the passage of time your enlightenment experience may fade away? If then Buddha achieved enlightenment, is it possible that his experience faded away after a few years?
Thank You

Answer
Hello Luke,
 Enlightenment is a hard thing to talk about because it is the ordinary mind itself that prevents us from seeing enlightenment.  In other words, your idea of who you are is what stands between you and seeing reality.  To see reality then you must lose this sense of  “I” that you have so you would no longer be realizing it as Luke but as all nature.  Wanting to know about it is like being hungry and wanting to know what eating food is like.  Someone who is full cannot possibly convey this idea to you, what they eat cannot satiate you, and no matter how they describe it you will never fully understand it, the only way is for you to experience or realize it yourself by eating.
  You ask some really good questions because there are different schools that have so-called requirements for enlightenment and it is sheer nonsense.  Like anything else humans do this is an attempt to arrange a power structure that someone else controls.  Buddhism is about self-awakening, like eating, only you can do it yourself.  There are many experiences you can go through that might fool you into thinking you are awakened but with time they all fade.  True awakening does not fade away and cannot fade away.
    There is no way to clearly define what awakening is that our normal minds can grasp.  This is where you get all the paradoxical and contradictory language of Zen that mainly confuses people.  Someone asks ‘what is awakening’ and the master replies ‘ 3 lbs of flax’ or ‘the willow tree in the yard’ and the student walks away.  What the master is trying to demonstrate is, you can’t know this, that is, this is something that the mind as you know it cannot know.  Our minds work by knowing things or so we think.  We know what a tree is or a cat, a rock or a chair but we really don’t know these things, we only know what we think they are.  So by ‘knowing’ something we hold it as a thought in our mind to grasp it. We have a thought of a cat, tree or rock but don’t know it other than as objects of our thoughts.  Enlightenment cannot be known, it is outside of knowing and the attempt to know it just reinforces the unawakened state.  Because this is so difficult it allows so many people to fraudulently claim to be awakened and act like idiots claiming they have some hidden knowledge.   Anyone can dance around and make nonsensical statements and seem like they are awakened when if fact they are not.  The marketplace is full of these gurus while the real ones tend not to expose themselves to such things.
   Another way to express this idea of not knowing is through art like music or sports.  If you want to play a sport to the fullest, lose yourself to it, or to lose yourself to playing an instrument, you have to no longer know what you are doing and just be purely doing it in the moment.  You lose your sense of self to become the act of running or playing, you cannot ‘know’ what you are doing because that separates you from the action.  You are doing it, momentarily, without knowing what you are doing, you are pure action or motion.  You have lost your sense of self to do this, yet there is still a sense of self because it is a willful act to do it.  Once you ‘know’ what you are doing you now stand outside of it, apart from it to know it and you are no longer ‘it’ as itself.
  Suppose you, Luke, really try to set up the conditions for awakening through some practice like meditation or mindfulness.  You keep at it for ages and then one day your mind clears up and you see things as they are.  Now the world is real and vibrant but it always was in front of you. That which created the illusion or problem has dissolved and now you are fulfilled and happy where you are.  What changed?  Your view of self, self-identity and the illusion of separation, which were all aspects of your mind did and yet at the same time nothing changed.  This metaphor has lots of problems that I acknowledge but think of this; you just put on glasses and now you really see the world, it was always there.  Did anything change?  No, just your view of it and now you want everyone else to see it but they don’t think they don’t see it so what do you do?  You thought you saw it for years and it wasn’t until your vision cleared up that you realized you were wrong.  Now what can you possibly say to others?  They just don’t see it.   Some do realize that their vision is faulty and are trying to change it but most don’t.  So now you see and they don’t and you can’t describe it or anything else.  It’s like telling someone they have a nose, they can’t see it but it’s right in front of their eyes.  In awakening the world as it is becomes realized in you, it was always there and now you can enjoy it.  It is not your awakening but the awakening to what already is there so there is no power struggle here, no hidden knowledge or anything else, just nature as it is.  What do you do?  Whatever you normally do, eat your lunch, work and enjoy life.
 I hope this has helped you,
                       Take care,
                                                  Joe